n style,
conducts to a second platform, elevated some seventy feet above the
ground. The view from it is magnificent, overlooking a world of
mausoleums, pagodas, temples, and kiosks, which the great trees had
concealed from us.

"The mausoleum is continued into an immense cupola, and terminates in a
pointed pyramid, covered with plates and mythological bas-reliefs.
Finally, the pyramid is crowned by a great gilded ball."

The travellers here quitted their English horses, and mounted the
frightful Chinese steeds which carry on the postal service. After a
couple of wearisome days, occupied in clearing narrow defiles, torrents,
and plains of blinding dust, they reached the Lazarist Mission.

On entering the town, they were surrounded by an immense multitude, all
silent and polite, but not the less fatiguing--_genant_, as Madame de
Bourboulon puts it. "Their eager curiosity did not fail to become very
inconvenient, and we could well have dispensed with the 20,000 quidnuncs
who accompanied us everywhere. We halted at last before the great
gateway above which figures, though only for a few days, the cross, that
noble symbol of the Latin civilization. It is the standard of humanity,
of generous ideas and universal emancipation, placed throughout the
extreme East under the protection of France. The English occupy
themselves wholly with commerce: for them, faith and the sublime
teachings of religion take but the second place."

Very few French travellers seem able to avoid an occasional outbreak of
splenetic patriotism. The greatness and the generosity of France are the
hobby-horse on which they ride with such a fanfare of trumpets as to
provoke the ridicule of the passer-by. Madame de Bourboulon, as a woman,
may be excused her little bit of sarcasm, though she must have known and
ought to have remembered what has been done and endured by English
missionaries in the name and for the sake of the cross of Christ.

The Lazarist priests gave our travellers a hearty welcome; and after a
good night's rest, the caravan quitted Suan-hou-pu, a large town,
remarkable for the number of Chinese Mussulmans who inhabit it. They
reached Kalgan on the 23rd of May, and were greeted by Madame de
Baluseck, who was to return to Europe in company with Madame de
Bourboulon. Thus, as Sir Frederick Bruce was still with them, the
representatives of the three greatest Powers in the world met together
in this remote town, which, previously, was almos